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Who has Health Care?

Health care costs are extremely important to take into consideration with your financial plan. As the baby boomer population is aging, these factors are becoming a higher priority in each family. Making sure the coverage you have will be sufficient as you age is essential in a successful financial plan and ultimately, retirement.

This topic is especially top of mind with the unrolling of the Affordable Care Act this past year.

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released a report, Health Insurance Coverage in the United States 2013.

The report explored who was insured and though what programs. The findings were very interesting:

13.4% (or approximately 42 million people) of the US population were uninsured for all of 2013

86.6% of the population had health insurance in 2013

64.2% were covered by private health insurance (53.9% of those covered by private health insurance obtained their coverage through their employer)

34.3% of the insured population had government health insurance(17.3% were covered by Medicaid and 15.6% were covered by Medicare)

The two main demographic details that were a correlation to health care coverage are age and income. According to the statistics, adults who are 65 and over and children under the age of 19 are more likely to have health care coverage. This is likely due to their eligibility for government health care programs. 93.6% of older adults and 40.4% of children are covered by government plans.

Not surprisingly, lower income households tend to have higher uninsured rates. Almost 22% of households with annual income under $25,000 were uninsured the entire year. This is compared to 18% of people with household income from $25,000 to $49,000, 31% of people with incomes ranging from $50,000 to $75,000. Households with income upwards of $150,000 had only a 5.3% uninsured rate.

Did any of these numbers surprise you? What’s been your experience with the Affordable Care Act?

Information is provided 'as is' and solely for informational purposes, not for investment purposes or advice.BrightScope is not a fiduciary under ERISA. BrightScope is not endorsed by or affiliated with FINRA.